Page 40 (part 1)

The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page]] 540 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. [[This page continued from previous section ]] ------- IX. THE SOLAR THEORY. A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND AND SINGLE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE AS AGAINST THE OCCULT TEACHINGS. HOW FAR SCIENTIFIC IS THIS THEORY, AS GENERALLY ACCEPTED. I N his reply to Dr. Gull's attack on the theory of vitality (connected inseparably with the Elements of the ancients in the Occult philosophy), Professor Beale, the great physiologist, has a few words as suggestive as they are beautiful: -- "There is a mystery in life -- a mystery which has never been fathomed, and which appears greater, the more deeply the phenomena of life are studied and contemplated. In living centres -- far more central than the centres seen by the highest magnifying powers, in centres of living matter, where the eye cannot penetrate, but towards which the understanding may tend -- proceed changes of the nature of which the most advanced physicists and chemists fail to afford us the conception: nor is there the slightest reason to think that the nature of these changes will ever be ascertained by physical investigation , inasmuch as they are certainly of an order or nature totally distinct from that to which any other phenomenon known to us can be relegated." This "mystery," or the origin of the LIFE ESSENCE, Occultism locates in the same centre as the nucleus of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar system. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 541 THE HEART OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. " The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the ( visible ) Sun. From thence , sensation is radiated into every nerve - centre of the great body , and the waves of the life - essence flow into each artery and vein . . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses. . . ." (Commentary.) It was stated elsewhere ( in the Theosophist ) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the real Sun being hidden behind, and the visible being only its reflection, its shell. The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir J. Herschell for "Solar inhabitants," are the reservoirs of solar vital energy, "the vital electricity that feeds the whole system. . . . . The Sun in abscondito being thus the storehouse of our little Kosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out," and the visible Sun only a window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work. Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart -- the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during the manvantaric solar period, or life; the Sun contracting as rhythmically at every return of it, as the human heart does. Only, instead of performing the round in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of the system. This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar HEART. The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours. The dark region is not due "to the absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between the observer and the photosphere," as Father Secchi would have it (" Le Soleil " II. , 184), nor are the spots formed "by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar disc" ( ibid ) . It is similar to the regular and healthy pulsation of the heart, as the life fluid passes through its hollow muscles. Could the human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made visible, so as to have it reflected upon a screen, such as [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Not only does it not deny the occurrence, though attributing it to a wrong cause, as always, each theory contradicting every other, ( see the theories of Secchi , of Faye , and of Young ), the spots depending on the superficial accumulation of vapours cooler than the photosphere (?), etc., etc., but we have men of science who astrologize upon the spots. Professor Jevons attributes all the great periodical commercial crises to the influence of the Sun spots every eleventh cyclic year. ( See his " Investigations into Currency and Finance. ") This is worthy of praise and encouragement surely. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 542 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. used by the astronomers in their lectures -- say for the moon -- then every one would see the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the rushing of the blood. It is said in a work on Geology that it is the dream of Science that "all the recognized chemical elements will one day be found but modifications of a single material element. " (" World - Life ," p. 48.) Occult philosophy has taught this since the existence of human speech and languages, adding only, on the principle of the immutable law of analogy -- "as it is above, so it is below" -- that other axiom, that there is neither Spirit nor matter, in reality, but only numberless aspects of the One ever-hidden IS (or Sat ) . The homogeneous primordial Element is simple and single only on the terrestrial plane of consciousness and sensation, since matter, after all, is nothing else than the sequence of our own states of consciousness, and Spirit an idea of psychic intuition. Even on the next higher plane, that single element which is defined on our earth by current science, as the ultimate undecomposable constituent of some kind of matter, would be pronounced in the world of a higher spiritual perception as something very complex indeed. Our purest water would be found to yield, instead of its two declared simple elements of oxygen and hydrogen, many other constituents, undreamt of by our terrestrial modern chemistry. As in the realm of matter, so in the realm of Spirit, the shadow of that which is cognized on the plane of objectivity exists on that of pure subjectivity. The speck of the perfectly homogeneous substance, the sarcode of the Haeckelian monera , is now viewed as the archebiosis of terrestrial existence (Mr. Huxley's "protoplasm")*; and Bathybius Haeckelii has to be traced to its pre -terrestrial archebiosis. This is first perceived by the astronomers at its third stage of evolution, and in the "secondary creation," so-called.